


God's Honest Truth

by thedevilchicken



Category: Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Explicit Sexual Content, Lies, M/M, Post-Canon, Undercover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-28
Updated: 2016-07-28
Packaged: 2018-07-27 08:20:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7610683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Freddy finds lies come easy to him, and they pretty much always have. But the lie wasn't easy with White.</p>
            </blockquote>





	God's Honest Truth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mechanicaljewel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mechanicaljewel/gifts).



> I've taken some liberties with the timeline here, hence canon-divergence. Just roll with it!

"Well, well, well. If it ain't Freddy fucking Newandyke."

Freddy smiles a rueful little smile. He's not heartless, after all. He's not insensitive. Sure, you have to be a certain kind of guy to work undercover, and Freddy's that kind of guy to a fucking T. You have to jump headlong into some bureaucratic pencil-pusher's work of bullshit administrative fiction and then live it, breathe it, till you've made it real enough the bad guys'll buy it wholesale. You have to lie so damn hard and so well and so damn consistent you could fool your own little old nanna into believing the sky ain't blue and not feel too bad about it later, after, when you're done and you slip back out into society. Undercover cops lie their cute little asses off for a living, so of course it takes a certain kind of guy.

Freddy finds lies come easy to him, and they pretty much always have. But the lie wasn't easy with White.

Once he was in, really in, Long Beach Mike's story sticking like glue though it was all just so much fucking piss and hot air, it made sense to get himself an ally on the inside, a buddy, a brother-in-arms, just so he didn't stick out like a sore thumb or a square peg in a round hole or whatever the fuck other simile came to mind at that particular juncture. Holdaway even agreed with him, some shit about how if it all went south in a hurry then even if the poor sap only held his corner for twenty seconds it might be enough to get him out of there alive and, in the end, undercover ops were like landing a plane: any you walk away from's just absolutely fucking great. 

So, that first day, that first full meeting, he assessed the possibilities. Blonde gave him the heebie fucking jeebies and seemed tight with Eddie Cabot to boot. Blue had all the personality of a limp goddamn dishrag with the droning monotone to match and he'd've rather chewed off his own hand at the wrist than spend more time than absolutely strictly fucking necessary around Mr. Brown and his ridiculous, tortuous damn stories. For a minute he thought maybe Pink, except the guy had some major league paranoia that showed up within the first half hour that, okay, wasn't so much paranoia given circumstances, but it wasn't like the guy knew that then. That left Eddie and Joe and Mr. White and since Joe was strictly no-fucking-go and if they could've gotten a word out of Eddie then he figured they'd've done it years ago, that left White. He angled to get himself paired up with the guy and Joe went right ahead and obliged him in that, just like magic, just like fate. 

The hell of it was, they hit it off straight off the bat. White was funny in a fucking dry sort of way, witty, had a turn of phrase that made Freddy smirk behind the rim of his glass and they shared a look nobody else there saw, like they were the only two guys at the table who got the fucking joke. The next day, when they all met in the funeral parlor like that shit wasn't grim and full of motherfucking foreboding in the slightest, they hung back after and struck up a conversation about the nice piece White was carrying, a conversation that they carried on in the car while White dropped him home. Freddy had his guy. He just needed an in, past cordial into something deeper. At least artificially.

Of course, he guessed White's dirty little secret inside of two hours the next day, with some surreptitious eyeballing: the guy was gay. Maybe the other guys saw him as straight but that was pretty much the point the way Freddy saw it, 'cause White was playing straight and he was clearly pretty fucking good at it and besides, who the fuck was on the lookout for a faggot in the planning stages of a six-man diamond heist? But there was something there, round the edges, and Freddy saw it. _That_ was his in. It was perfect, if he played it cool, super-cool.

"Look, I don't want shit to get awkward," Freddy said, in the car when they left the diner that afternoon, "but I know."

"And precisely what do you think you know?" White asked, with a brief sidelong glance and an amused little smile, his hands on the wheel. He made a left, heading back toward Freddy's.

"You're gay." Freddy shrugged. "Look, it's no big deal, I don't give a fuck about any of that shit, okay? But I thought you should know I know, y'know?"

White smirked. Then, after a moment's quiet contemplation, he slapped on his turn signal and pulled over to the curb. 

"Well, gee, that's real big of you, kid," he said, killing the engine and turning toward him in his seat. "You don't give a shit who I fuck, that's great, real swell, bravo." He gave him a slow-clap round of applause, but Freddy would've sworn to God, his hand on the Bible, that the guy looked ten times more amused than he did pissed. White drummed the fingers of one hand on the wheel, his other hand shifting to rest behind the headrest of Freddy's seat, and the way his jacket pulled as he moved, Freddy could see the gun he'd admired the day before holstered there against his ribs. Maybe that was on purpose, just to see if he'd flinch, or maybe he'd made a big fucking mistake and that was the end of it. But Freddy didn't flinch. He's not the flinching type.

Then White's mouth turned up into a half-teasing half-smile. "Say, you wanna get a drink?" he said, and Freddy laughed, shook his head as he looked at him, raked his fingers through his hair. 

"Jesus Christ, Mr. White, I thought you were all set to fucking ice me over this shit," he said. Then he shuffled in his seat, leaned forward a couple of inches. "So, hey, you mean I wanna get a drink, or..." Freddy tilted his head and raised his eyebrows pretty goddamn significantly. "Y'know, I wanna _get a drink_?"

"You mean, am I coming onto you?" White gave a second's chuff of laughter, his eyes all crinked the hell up with amusement. "Sure, kid, why not. Your ass is clearly fucking irresistible, far be it for me to argue that point." He opened the driver's side door. "C'mon, I want a drink. I'll drop you off after. We'll be a half hour, tops." 

White got out of the car. So, Freddy went with him. He figured maybe he wasn't so shit out of luck with his in after all.

The bar's radio was tuned into K-Billy's Super Sounds of the Seventies when they got inside and took a table, sat down on beat-up old chairs, some track Freddy remembered from grade school and White said he'd heard it when he'd gotten out of lockup for his first fucked-up robbery, not the first robbery but the first one he'd gotten caught for, hazard of the job. And when they left an hour and a half later, not thirty minutes, when White was done driving around awhile just for shits and giggles while they shot the breeze with all the windows rolled way the hell right down in the afternoon sun, Freddy asked him if he wanted to come in, grab a beer and watch the game. 

"Yeah, I'll pass this time," White said. "But thanks for the offer, kid." Freddy nodded and got out, gave the car roof a goodbye slap then White was gone. He drove the way that said he'd never gotten pulled over for a traffic violation in his life, safe and sure and really fucking steady, but the way he handled the vehicle said something else. Maybe he'd gotten his start boosting cars. But then maybe he was into the goddamn demolition derby, who the fuck even knew.

White said the same damn thing the next day when he asked and then the day after that, after they'd done their job-related, Cabot-mandated homework on the diamond joint. Joe had gotten the intel on the delivery and he and Eddie had gotten together the plan and then rounded up the guys that'd do the deed, but the specifics of it needed ironing the hell right out and reporting back beforehand so everything could run just as smooth as clockwork. And so there the two of them were, observing security, observing customers, eating hamburgers out of paper bags in the front seat of some shitty sedan Joe had loaned them that was probably as old as Freddy was, or at least damn close. 

"So, can I offer you a beer?" Freddy asked in the car, day two.

White shrugged. "I'm gonna have to pass," he replied. "But I'll take a rain check, yeah?"

"So, you wanna grab a beer?" Freddy asked, day three, as they pulled up to the curb outside his place.

"Today's not the day I cash in that rain check, kid," White replied. "I'll pass again, okay?"

"Beer and a ball game?" Freddy asked with a grin, day four. White looked like he might laugh out loud at the not-quite-euphemism, but he'd been doing that for days by then anyway, double entendres that the other guys didn't notice, Freddy leaning too close, squeezing a shoulder or a knee, White's arm resting against the back of Freddy's seat. Jesus Christ, he liked the guy. He liked the clowning around, liked making him laugh, liked his cologne and his laughter lines and the way he went from hardass to nice guy to fucking hardass again in the blink of an eye when he needed to. He liked the ease with which he handled a gun and he liked the sharp-edged look he gave him those times when the innuendo cut too close for comfort.

"Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and pass," White replied, just like normal, though he didn't look and hadn't looked anything but amused by the suggestion, except maybe when he'd looked fractionally intrigued. Freddy wasn't sure if that was because White wanted to keep things strictly professional - no names, no personal shit - or if the innuendo really had cut close 'cause fuck, maybe a couple of stupid-ass mornings jerking off in the shower thinking about all the other places White might have gotten tattoos besides his forearm had lit up like a neon sign across his forehead.

"You're sure?" Freddy asked, feeling faintly hot under the collar.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure."

"Sure you're sure?" White nodded. "C'mon, what's the worst that could happen? This ain't exactly my family home and I swear I'll toss my mail in the trash so you'll continue to know shit about my personal details. Cross my heart and hope to fucking die, okay?"

He crossed his heart, looking appropriately solemn. White looked at him while he did it, and then continued after. White fucking _studied_ him. Then he sat back in his seat and finally he killed the engine. 

"Shit, I ain't never known nobody so damn desperate to offload his fucking beer," he said. "Sure, kid, what the hell. I guess one beer can't hurt." 

So, they crossed the street and they went inside. Freddy unlocked the outside door and all the conversational chitchat died down and they went into the building, trailed up the stairs and he opened up the door to the apartment, his temporary abode that had started to feel less and less fucking temporary with each day that passed, chez fucking Newandyke though it wasn't like he could use that name right then. He left White by the door and grabbed a couple of beers from the refrigerator, anxious and who the fuck even knew why except he liked the guy, he was a decent guy, not a good guy 'cause that was stretching credulity right to its fucking limits right there when the guy made his living in armed robbery, but he liked him. Holdaway liked to tell him he was too goddamn trusting, gave scumbag sons of bitches too high a damn opinion and maybe he did but fuck, trust just wasn't the issue and never had been. The issue was Freddy could see both sides of the line and in his line of work, sometimes that line got pretty fucking blurred.

"Yeah, just take a seat anywhere," Freddy said, and handed him a beer once he'd popped the cap off of it on the edge of the kitchen counter. "Mi casa es su casa and all that shit, okay?"

White didn't sit. He looked around instead, eyed the bottle of cheap-ass beer in his hand like suddenly he understood why Freddy wanted it expeditiously gone from his life then he looked at the room, all the half-empty surfaces, at the artistically arranged clutter that formed the half-bogus life of Mr. Orange. There was just enough of himself there that he could keep it straight in his head but then just enough that wasn't so he couldn't be traced right back in a direct line to his badge number.

"What's with all the comicbook shit, kid?" White asked, gesturing at the posters with his beer bottle. "You twelve fucking years old?"

"I happen to like this comicbook shit, Mr. White," Freddy said. "And I turned thirty like two months ago. I ain't exactly some wet-behind-the-ears little penny-ante thief who still pisses the bed when he has a scary dream, okay? Lay off the comics."

White lifted his hands. "Okay, okay," he said. "Jesus, kid, I didn't know you were so goddamn high strung." Then he handed back the beer. "Look, I got someplace to be," he said. "I'll pick you up same time tomorrow." And he left, no further discussion. 

That was fine, Freddy told himself, as he watched the guy get into the shitty car and drive away, from his bedroom window overlooking the street. Freddy finished White's beer as well as his own and he told himself it wasn't one step forward and two steps back, and who the hell got so damn touchy over the motherfucking Silver Surfer? He sat down on the couch and watched TV over the remains of the previous day's Chinese takeout that he ate with a fork and felt kinda like that was cheating and he told himself he hadn't just gotten pissy for no goddamn reason and fucked shit up irrevocably with White. Like that mattered. Maybe it did. 

But the next day, there was no problem there at all. The next day, White came in again when they were done with work and that was like a big-ass sign from the universe right there, Freddy thought. White wasn't pissed so he decided fuck it, go for broke, all or nothing: when Freddy reached out one hand to pass him a beer, he went in closer with it, too. He kissed him on the mouth, cold from his first mouthful of beer. He kissed him on the mouth, their bottles clinking together. Then he stepped back. He raised his brows.

"What did you go and do a thing like that for?" White asked, but he didn't look repulsed by it, just kinda confused, kinda taken by surprise. Honestly, so was Freddy. He hadn't exactly planned it. He hadn't made notes.

"I guess I wanted to," Freddy said, watching White as he took another swig from his bottle. 

"Yeah, well I'm not gonna aid in your fucking adolescent sexual awakening," White said. "You want somebody to suck your dick, you find yourself a nice Catholic girl and settle down. Though from the look of this, I think you already did."

He held up one hand and thumbed his bare ring finger. Freddy cursed under his breath and yanked the ring off of his own hand, tossed it into the plate of change on the coffee table and spilled beer down his shirt in the process. 

"Yeah, that's just for show," he said, but that wasn't right or at least wasn't the story. He frowned. He scrubbed his face with his hands. "Look, I'm divorced, okay?"

"Yeah, so am I."

"You are?"

"I am."

"But I thought you were..."

"Does that mean a guy can't get married?"

"Well, technically, no."

"Then that's your fucking mystery solved right there."

Freddy sighed. He ran his fingers through his hair, tugged on it and practically growled, frustrated. Then he marched right back up there and he kissed him again and when White eased him back, his hands at Freddy's upper arms, there was a beer stain transfer there on the front of his shirt. 

"Hey, shit, man, I'm sorry," Freddy said. 

"For the kiss?"

"For the beer." He flashed him a grin. "Yeah, I'm not exactly sorry for the rest."

And White chuckled but that didn't stop him handing back his beer and leaving just like he had the first time. And maybe he'd fucked up again like he had with the comics - his shirt sure as hell needed a trip down to the laundromat in a pretty desperate way if he didn't want to smell like a shitty bar long after closing - but that didn't stop White from coming back in with him the next day, too. 

"Look, I'm not some old queen out cruising for a pity fuck," White said, once the door was closed behind them. Freddy hadn't even had the time to pass him the beer he never drank. Hell, he hadn't even gotten them out of the refrigerator by that point.

"Well, who the fuck exactly said you were?" Freddy said.

"And I don't fuck straight guys that're questioning their goddamn sexuality, either."

"And who says I am?"

"Questioning?"

"Straight."

White narrowed his eyes. "Well you're sure as hell not lifting any shirts, Mr. Orange." 

"Then you better tell that to my ex," Freddy said. "The one who kicked my sorry ass right out of the house when she found me in bed with her cousin." He put his hands on his hips. "Her _male_ cousin. His name was Jackie. He was like forty-five and had a fucking mustache like something out of a seventies porno flick that tickled the fuck out of my dick when he blew me. And you're telling me I'm straight? 

White looked at him. White chuckled. "Well, shit," he said. "It sounds like your sorry ass got just what it deserved." But Freddy could see right away the general idea had gotten into his head more than the specifics of it. White was looking at him and seeing him with an older guy, maybe not too much younger than he was. He was seeing the possibility. 

Freddy was lying, of course. He's always been a good liar, a good actor, a good teller of tales, 'cause he _had_ been caught once but it hadn't been some ex-wife he'd never had. It was back when he was seventeen years old and his best friend's mom had gotten off work early and there they'd been, jacking each other off in the family room like that was perfectly normal behavior for their junior year of high school after hockey practice. She tossed Freddy out of the house in his underwear, but three days later the two of them went all the way and that was that. So there it was: there was just enough truth to the story that it didn't sound like he'd pulled it straight out of his ass. 

It takes a certain kind of guy to do with work he was doing then and be good at it. And when White stepped closer, just a foot or so but closer, he was pretty sure the guy believed him. He was pretty sure he'd been convincing. And the look on White's face was fucking intense. The look on White's face was like all the jokes and the chitchat and the thieves-in-arms camaraderie had been a weird-ass sublimation of something else, something really specific. The innuendos _had_ cut too close. White was interested in him. White was attracted to him. White wanted him. Jesus, White looked just like he wanted to nail him right then and there up against the mirror behind the door. Freddy wanted him to want that 'cause shit, he wanted it too. He'd've let him. He'd've liked it.

"I'll see you tomorrow," White said, instead, composed and easy again in a split fucking second. But the next day, back there in the apartment, Freddy kissed him and when he did it, White kissed him back. 

"I've got someplace I need to be," White said, when he pulled back, looking pretty goddamn flustered, like kissing him had been some kind of dumbass accident, like he'd tripped and fell on Freddy's mouth.

"So come back when you're done," Freddy said. "I'm sure as hell not going anyplace." 

White said, "Maybe," and exited downstage, upstage, whatever the fuck direction the door was, and Freddy was convinced, _convinced_ , he wouldn't see him again till the morning. But sometime around midnight, there was a knock on the door. He checked the time on the clock by the bed and he fished out his gun and he walked into the ladder in the middle of the room like a dumbass on the way to the door, knocked it the hell over with a god-almighty fucking crash. He managed to stay upright though who the fuck knew how and finally, stroke of genius that it was, he turned on the lights. 

"You okay in there?" White called through the door and so Freddy uncocked the revolver in his hand and he opened the door, barefoot and shirtless in half-unbuttoned jeans. White looked at him. White's brows rose. 

"Yeah, man, I'm fine, I'm just a fucking clumsy son of a bitch," Freddy told him, and he stepped aside to let him in. He closed the door behind him and stood back against it, the gun shoved into one hip pocket and his hands shoved in behind the small of his back. "Did you need something?"

"You said come back later, so I..." White shrugged. Freddy grinned. 

"So you came back later." 

"Yeah, that pretty much sums up what it is that I did."

"So I see." 

"But if it's a bad fucking time, I can..." He gestured at the door behind Freddy's back. 

"I'd say it's a pretty great time."

"Yeah, but I'm tired the hell out and I'm sure you are too, and I don't even fucking know what I'm--" 

"So come to bed." 

White eyed him. White eyeballed him like interrupting his train of thought was a hanging offence or maybe just from surprise and so Freddy turned away and walked away back into the bedroom. "You're either in or you're out," he called back. "And look, hey, I promise I'll keep my hands to myself." And jazz hands in the bedroom doorway probably didn't do much to convince him, but somehow they seemed appropriate.

He wasn't sure what White would do but he didn't hear the door and then a couple of minutes later, in White walked. Freddy was back in bed by then, jeans on the floor, gun on the nightstand, and he watched White unbutton his shirt, slow and deliberate. He watched him sit down on the free edge of the bed to untie his shoes and take off his socks and then stand again to unbuckle his belt and drop his pants. He watched him, on his side, his head propped up on one hand, as White turned to him. He tossed back the sheets. He patted the mattress with a shit-eating grin spread all over his face. And then, finally, White sat down, laid down, put his head on the pillow and turned it to look at him. 

"This is fucking crazy," White said. 

"Yeah, yeah," Freddy replied, dismissive, and he reached across him to turn out the light, leaned right over him chest-to-chest and then flopped back down on his back in the dark. "Tell me again in the morning," he said then, and White seemed pleased enough with that. 

He told him again in the morning. They woke and they pissed and they brushed their teeth, Freddy made coffee and they sat at his shitty, chipped formica kitchen table on his torn pleather seat in their underwear and undershirts to drink it. It only tasted like minty-fresh toothpaste for a minute.

"This is fucking crazy," White said, and went barefoot to the counter to pour himself another cup of too-strong coffee, and when he sat himself back down, Freddy stood and he straddled White's thighs and he sat himself down right there on White's lap, coffee and all. White laughed, and who the fuck knew if that was at him or at the whole fucking situation but either way, Freddy took a sip of his coffee and then leaned back to put it down on the table, then he did the same damn thing exactly with White's cup, too. 

"I'm too old for you, kid," White said, watching him, while Freddy's fingers toyed with the back of White's graying hair. 

"Y'know, I'm plenty old enough for you," Freddy replied, not quite offhand. "I'm old enough to drive a shitty car and vote for the wrong damn guy and chain smoke a whole carton of Red Apples a day till I get cancer or fucking emphysema or some shit and hack up half my lungs. I bought those beers I've got in the refrigerator and I could buy enough of them to fill the fucking tub and drown myself in it if I wanted to, and you know what? The clerk didn't even ask for my ID." He paused. He told himself it wasn't for dramatic effect, but it pretty much was. "So you know what?" he said. "If I'm old enough that I can fuck up my own life, I'm sure as hell old enough to fuck. And if I'm old enough to fuck, I'm old enough to fuck you." He raised his brows. "You got any other objections?"

"Well, that was a pretty convincing fucking monolog there, Shakespeare," White replied, crinkly-eyed with amusement. "But how about we start with the fact I don't even know your fucking name?"

"Occupational hazard, Mr. White," Freddy said. "Moving along." 

"How about you weigh a fucking ton and I can't feel my legs right now?"

"That's a pretty shitty objection when I'm trying to watch my girlish figure," Freddy said, with a mock-hurt expression, then he grinned like a fucking loon. "C'mon, if that's the best you've got then we're doing it right here and now over the kitchen table, man, I swear to God."

White looked at him. White frowned and he looked at him like he was evaluating the pros and cons of just shooting him dead and then he put his hands on Freddy's bare thighs instead, slow and deliberate. He put his hands at Freddy's hips, slid them up to his waist and held him there for a second. He put his hands on Freddy's shoulders, rubbing at his collarbones with his thumbs. He cupped his jaw with his palms. 

"This is fucking crazy," White said, shaking his head. But this time it wasn't an objection and they both knew it. 

"Yeah, sure it is," Freddy agreed, though he took one of White's hands and guided it down, pushed his palm over the semi in the crotch of his shorts and made him snicker. "But Jesus fucking Christ, I want your dick in me right now." White's snickering stopped. He wrapped White's fingers around him over the fabric of his shorts.

Freddy had meant what he said: he would've done it there over the table if they'd had the necessary fucking accoutrements to hand. As it was, they went back into the bedroom and they undressed with the damn curtains thrown right open to blinding morning sunlight, stood there naked in the apartment the local PD were paying for him to pay for, half-hard and fucking ridiculous, all tanlines and cock until White kissed him. White _kissed_ him. White fucking kissed him and he pushed him down on the bed and Jesus, maybe the guy was no damn underwear model, you'd sure as shit never see him on some billboard by the highway in his tighty-whiteys and some pseudo-sexy catalog pose, but he was big and he was rough and he was zeroed the fuck in on Freddy Newandyke like in that second he was all that existed in the universe. 

When Freddy, feigning nonchalance, fumbled in the drawer by the bed under the his gun and handed him the lube and handed him the unopened box of condoms still in cellophane, it didn't faze White for a second. He tore off the plastic wrap from the box without a problem, the way Freddy had never once managed to do in his life, especially not in the heat of the moment. There'd always been cursing and then wasted moments trying to rip that shit open with his teeth and the next thing he knew his cock would be halfway back down to flaccid and he'd need to head out into the damn kitchen for scissors just to get to one damn rubber. But White was cool. He uncapped the lube and squeezed it over his fingers and Freddy spread his thighs, pulled up his knees. White watched him as he did it, kneeling there between his thighs with his fingers rubbing there against his asshole. He did it slow, like he wanted him to really feel it, like he wanted him to know it was him and not some fictitious cousin Jackie with porno-grade facial hair. He felt it. He knew it was him. Fuck if he even knew his name, 'cause back then he didn't, but he knew it was him.

"Don't fucking tease me," Freddy said, so White shrugged and pulled back his hand and he tore open a condom instead and Freddy watched him roll it onto himself, watched him slick himself over the top of it, watched him shuffle right in close up to him. Then he leaned forward and he pushed straight into him, no preamble, no stop-start, just straight in in one long push that made Freddy groan in throes of fucking half-pained delight. He fucked him, Freddy reaching down for his hands and their fingers hooked tight together for leverage. He fucked him, skin slapping skin like every goddamn porno flick Freddy had ever seen in his life before though they'd've been pretty damned unlikely stars. White's cock slipped out of him a couple times but he pushed straight on back in again and fuck, each time he did it, each time he butted up balls-deep inside him, Freddy practically saw stars of a different kind. He hadn't fucked in months. He hadn't been fucked in years. He didn't regret it.

And when White was done, when he'd bucked his hips and groaned and finished, when he'd pulled back out and tossed the condom away into the trash across the room like the shot was nothing and not pretty damn well done, he slicked his fingers up again. They went down on their sides on the mattress, face to face, so close Freddy's vision almost blurred when he looked at him. Freddy hitched one thigh up over White's and White watched him, watched the expression on his sex-flushed face as he reached over and fingered him, his first two fingers pushing knuckle-deep inside him. Freddy came like that, just like that and _from_ that. It took him by surprise, the feel of it, spiralling, fucking vertiginous, and he came with a buck and a yelp over White's belly as he fucking trembled like a fucking leaf. He laughed, unsteady, embarrassed. White, for his part, didn't seem to mind. He seemed gratified. He seemed pleased. Freddy was pretty sure he could live with that.

"Shit, we'd better get to work," White said, when he saw the time on the clock by the bed, and so they did. But after, that night, White went back to Freddy's place and fucked him on his hands and knees, and then they ordered pizza. He was there the day after that, and Freddy blew him in the front seat of the borrowed car while they were parked outside in broad afternoon daylight. He rinsed his mouth with soda from the Hawaiian burger joint they'd driven by for lunch and leaned out of the open window to spit onto the sidewalk, while White laughed at him or with him and who the fuck knew which. The day after that, Freddy rode him like a goddamn rodeo bull, or at least a mechanical one set up in a cheap-ass theme bar, and then he brought himself off with his hand while White was still inside him. 

The day after that, they just jerked each other off slow and lazy on the couch, fully clothed, while they watched some ball game or other neither of them gave a shit about at all. White talked through it, about some job he'd done someplace, sometime, a bank, something he did for a friend of a friend of Joe's once upon a time, and his voice caught as he came. Freddy wanted to tell him to shut his damn fool mouth, wanted to kiss him to make him stop because he didn't want to know. Sometimes he caught himself hoping White would turn out to be a cop just like he was; he hoped he'd be FBI or DEA or fucking CIA or any other TLA in the law enforcement book he could think of even though it all made zero sense given the situation at hand. But he didn't feel guilty. He refused to feel guilty 'cause hell, he was just doing his job. He thought maybe he'd feel guilty later instead. He thought maybe he'd hate himself.

The day after that, Freddy read comicbooks on the couch with his head in White's lap while White read the newspaper. They drove around for a while, pulled up at a diner for lunch and drank coffee till Freddy felt jittery from the caffeine and White just smirked at him as he drummed along with K-Billy with a pair of drinks straws on the edge of the table like a sugared-up kid. Before they knew it, they'd spent their whole damn day off together, dicking around, talking, eating donuts in the front seat of the car and getting powdered sugar all over the dash. Freddy licked it off of White's fingers. He licked it off of his lips. They did it right there in the front seat of the car, cramped, Freddy's elbow hitting the horn. Jesus fucking Christ, he was in deep fucking trouble. 

The morning of the job, the heist, they did it at the kitchen table, knocked the coffee pot over and just left it there to stain because fuck it, they had places to be even if they had no clue then that they'd never be going back. They put on their suits in the bedroom side by side then they made out like idiots, fingers in each other's hair, pressed up up against Freddy's front door. They fixed each other's ties and Freddy kept his mouth shut because he knew he should, even if he felt a whole lot like he shouldn't. It felt a whole lot like betrayal, even if it wasn't.

And then, they went to work. He didn't tell him not to go and as they drove, he remembers thinking maybe he'd regret that later. 

"Well, well, well. If it ain't Freddy fucking Newandyke." 

Freddy smiles a rueful little smile. He's not heartless, after all. He's not insensitive. He knows exactly what he did and he know exactly what he'd have to do, even before the day Mr. White became Larry. 

He lied his ass off at the trial and it was easy to do it. Brown killed the woman in the car they stole, he said. And his bosses bought it, IA bought it, even though it made no fucking evidential sense, 'cause he sold it to them so damn well. He made out Larry Dimmick had been his CI all along in all but name and since inside the joint was pretty much a bloodbath caused by a certifiable fucking kill-crazy madman by the name of Vic Vega, in the end it turned out all Larry would do was his six years for armed robbery, not life for murder, and that was that. Detective Freddy Newandyke was a goddamn veritable hero. He watched Larry's face as they called him to the stand at the trial, watched him clench his jaw at the name _Freddy Newandyke_ , at _Detective Newandyke_ , and then look away. 

The first time he visited him inside, all they did was stare at each other through the glass like some kind of fucking freak show exhibition or a creepy art installation, the kind Freddy never understands. They didn't even pick up the receivers. 

The second time he visited, they went ahead and picked up the receivers. Neither one of them could conjure up a single word to say. Freddy listened to him breathe. That was enough; for a couple of weeks after, no one had been able to tell him if White - if Larry - had lived or died. They told him to concentrate on living his own damn self, 'cause it was pretty touch and go. It was enough that he was breathing.

The third time, Freddy said, "I'm sorry, Larry." 

The fourth time, Larry said, "Me too, kid."

These days, Detective Newandyke's now Special Agent Newandyke. He's undercover DEA because he's good at it, he knows the work, he knows how to tell a lie and really sell it. He's thirty-four years old and fucking world-weary and when he was shot last year it really didn't feel that bad, comparatively speaking, 'cause he'd had worse. He'd almost bled to death on the floor of a goddamn funeral parlor, once upon a time. He'd taken a second bullet instead of lie to the guy he'd been fucking for one second longer. Sometimes he tells himself all they did was fuck, but they shared his bed every night for a week and it fucks him up when he thinks about it, no matter who he's pretending to be at the time. 

"Well, well, well. If it ain't Freddy fucking Newandyke." 

Freddy smiles a rueful little smile. He's not heartless, after all. He's not insensitive. He just leans against the hood of his cheap new-old car, his legs crossed at the ankles, and he smiles his rueful smile because he means it. He's fucking full right up with rue, whatever rue is. It didn't spill back out of him when he got shot. He's never not regretted what he had to do.

"Hey, Larry," he says. "You need a ride?"

Larry looks like maybe he's going to say no and that's what Freddy pretty much expected all along, but that hadn't seemed like an excuse not to be there. It would've been easier, he thinks, not being there, but then Larry walks over there in the suit he went inside in, opens the passenger side door of Freddy's shitty sedan and he gets inside without another word, so Freddy follows. He starts the car. It's fucking weird for him to drive instead of Larry 'cause it was always the other way around but there it is and they pull away from the prison gates, onto the asphalt, head away from there like that's absolutely fucking imperative. They don't speak. There's not another word till they pull into the motel down the road and Freddy pays at the desk 'cause Larry's a freshly released ex-con with no real cash on hand, and they go inside. 

They eat once they're there, just microwaved burritos from the shitty convenience store by the gas station across the parking lot, listening to the TV blare in the room next door. Freddy figures it's got to be better than prison food but how the hell would he know anyway and it's not like Larry volunteers that information and then they wash it down with lukewarm soda that fizzes up in Freddy's mouth and brings him out in a coughing fit that just makes Larry raise his brows at him. Except it's not the coughing that does it. It's the way his collar pulled aside as he moved and the scar peeked out from underneath. 

"Show me," Larry says, so he stands and dutifully takes off his shirt and Larry takes it in his hands like maybe he's gonna smother him with it, but then he tosses it aside, onto the bed. He stands up, too, steps forward so Freddy steps back and he puts his hand on the scar there over Freddy's gut and then the one in his neck that he put there himself, with the gun Freddy liked, angry, at the end of it. And when they fuck, on their knees, Larry's chest pressed up to Freddy's back, slow and deep like maybe it was inevitable this whole time, Larry's mouth keeps straying to that place where his bullet went and almost killed him. Freddy forgot to bring condoms but neither of them care. All it really means is Freddy feels like it's real and not just the latest episode in his four-year wet dream nightmare.

"Pink shared the diamonds," Freddy says, after, and Larry says, "I know." 

"Leave with me," Freddy says, after that, and Larry says, "Kid, didn't I just do that already?"

Freddy grins, real slow. Larry smirks to match. And Freddy knows, somehow he _knows_ , Larry forgave him about twenty seconds after he shot him, when they were both on course to die. 

He's a DEA agent these days, not that he's where he's meant to be. He's assigned to some cross-border cartel shit and he thinks maybe when he's gone they'll guess - and it'll be pretty reasonable as far as guesses go - that some machete-wielding Mexican has chopped his fucking head off as a warning to the guys he's meant to work for. Larry's parole officer will guess he's just skipped town and file the report and Freddy knows no one's gonna look for him. And when he grabs the shady passports from the glovebox of his shitty ride, Larry's calls him _Laurence LeBlanc_ and he's called _Frederick Orange_.

"How's your British accent?" Larry says, looking fucking amused at Freddy's passport, already three years old because he's had it there the whole time, tucked away, waiting for the day Larry got out of the joint.

"How's your French-Canadian?" Freddy replies, as Larry opens up his own and laughs out loud. 

Jesus Christ, Freddy thinks, the two of them will make a fucking pair, but Larry doesn't seem to mind at all. They're liars, both of them, right down to their fucking bones, and they've had that in common all along; they'll lie their way through this, too, White and Orange, so the cash Freddy got for the ice won't go to waste. They'll lie together till it's as good as the truth that only they'll know. 

There were a hell of a lot of things Freddy would've done while undercover. There were a hell of a lot of things he'd've been downright fucking encouraged to do while undercover, too. What he actually did that time, on the other hand, was not one of them. What he did while they got the Cabots was something else: he found a guy who lied like he did, and then he told him the truth.

They're liars, sure. They're liars, but Freddy would've died that day to tell him what he'd done and clear the air. They're liars, but there's no lies left for them to tell except the lie that they don't want this; they want it, and that's not a lie. That's God's honest truth.


End file.
